Climate Change
Getting to grips with global warming
Governments, businesses and individuals around the world are looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fonterra is implementing initiatives across our business to reduce our carbon footprint.
We’ve already made some great progress:
• We have cut energy use per tonne of product by 34 per cent since 1990. This equates to an emissions reduction of 265,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent below normal business levels every year.
• The emissions efficiency of our farmers has also been improving - at the rate of about 1 per cent per year since 1990.
• In order to understand the best ways to reduce emissions we have recently completed a carbon footprint study of the entire lifecycle of our New Zealand supply chain. We now know where and why emissions occur throughout the supply chain and can better target research investment.
• We are committed to reducing emissions per unit of product further. In partnership with government we are investing millions of dollars in leading edge research to further reduce the dairy industry’s carbon footprint. This includes research into the effectiveness of nitrification inhibitors in reducing emissions of nitrous oxide.
We are taking our responsibilities under New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme seriously. We’re now in the third year of simulating our own internal emissions trading scheme – The Emission Account – which monitors each of our New Zealand manufacturing site’s emissions.
We’re also collaborating with our industry partners around the world, and played a key role in developing the Global Dairy Agenda for Action on Climate Change .
